45.2 You Can't Design Family
General Summary
Clinging to the idea that I will have maybe ten minutes to speak with my family in the Dreaming, I try to sketch out what I think they need to know.
Artemisia’s vision foretold Harmony bringing about the Pruning and so Ailanthus rallied many Treeborn to bring down the Heart and imprison her forever: Ailanthus, Galfen, Temira, Artemisia, Ankhetla, Fabaceae, Caryophyllales, along with several Axiols. In the intervening years, Temira has stepped away from him, and Artemisia is anyone's guess. She created the Dream Spike. But Ailanthus wants to end cycles and groves altogether, and I think he manipulated the Treeborn to stand with him. They feared that Harmony would mean the end of their cycles as their children would choose to become something else (like Temira’s children). Ailanthus himself, from the Heart's perspective, has always wanted to just have control of everyone. The Heart remains imprisoned in the thicket of the Northern Grove, guarded by Ankhetla. Her advice is that we need to strengthen me enough to be able to withstand the force of Harmony and she suggests that we collect her tears from where she is imprisoned in the Northern Grove. You could get there by travelling in the Dreaming and popping out into the waking world. Personally, I think that if you’re making the trip, it might be wise to try and free the Heart. She disagrees. I trust all of your judgements and if you choose to attempt it, I would recommend bringing Magdalena, Uncle Red, Mistress, maybe Cereus? And you can use anything in my purse (including that weird marble). In my opinion, Magdalena shouldn’t make this decision. Perhaps Uncle Red.- I also think it is possible that taking on No Moon’s legacy now would strengthen me, but I’m not willing to take that on if it diminishes my elf or fae legacies. Magdalena, Rainbow, and Starfield would know better than me how that would work out. Magdalena and Uncle Red need to know a few things:Once I’ve had a chance to recover a bit, the Heart returns to ask what kind of magic I’ve used to bind myself to my family. Unlike with many people, I don’t hold back when I explain the blood binding that Magdalena taught me. I have to assume that the Heart is ‘allowed’ to know this stuff. With this magic, the Heart thinks I can reach some members of my family directly. With Liliales at least, we might be able to have ten minutes. It will be easiest with him because we are song-bound, nearby, near an origin tree. We might also be able to reach Mistress, but for a shorter period of time and only after the Heart gives her some of the same magic I received through Magdalena’s tree. It will make things a little easier- with Liliales, at least, I can send him all of the experiences I’ve had here for context. I have the magic Nal gave me for sharing memories between fae of day and night. And so we begin the magic that will call Liliales to me so we can speak for a short time, at least.
- The Heart did save Jaedien’s song. She let him be reborn as fae of seasons. Ankhetla was lying to Uncle Red.
- The Heart worked magic to let me connect with Magdalena’s tree. It wouldn’t have worked without her.
Liliales
The space where we both manifest is hazy and foggy - hardly there at all. The origin tree of day and night looms above us and my little son is misty and translucent like he, too, is hardly there. Before he can say anything, I hush him and flood him with all of the memories of what I've experienced in Harmony since I blacked out. If nothing else, that information needs to make it through. He staggers and sits heavily on the ground and I join him, folding him into a hug for a few seconds despite the pounding in my heart. Or my non-heart? Regardless of what's causing it - something pulses inside me, reminding me that we do not have the luxury of time. He answers some of my questions as clearly as he can - Magdalena hasn’t slept and she pushes Liliales away when he tries to help. She and Rainbow have been working nonstop on solutions, including No Moon’s legacy. Rainbow thinks it’s too risky with me so near death. He promises to get Magdalena to sleep. Ausha is okay. Thankfully we finished her work with the taproot so that she can be separate from me, though she can't move very far from my body. My heart twists again in that strange texture I've been holding at bay. Since I invited her in, I have never been alone. I tell Liliales that he must tell everyone else what is happening, since I won't be able to reach anyone else for certain. Even reaching Mistress will be somewhat uncertain. I send him away before I strictly need to, I think. My head is filling with the buzzing sensation of a growing headache and my vision is woozy and blurring and I can't bear to hold him until I disappear. Back to the waking world he goes.Back in Harmony, the Heart asks if I want to try to reach Mistress. The weakest part of me wants to say no, I can't bear to see her while I'm in this state. I can't shake the memory of holding her, covered in my blood, as we fled from the Collective's camp. I don't want her to have that experience too. But the better part of me wins, and we begin the magic again.
Mistress
This time, it is the plum tree in the orchard that towers over us. She is even hazier than Liliales, and I can feel from the weakness of the magic here that there is no way I could reach anyone who wasn't standing beside their origin tree. Fortunately there is nothing I have to tell her - Liliales has already seen her. But seeing me is reassuring, she tells me, and that is what she really needed. I cling to her and dissolve into tears. We probably have half the time I had with Liliales, and the tasks I need to give her are not easy. I won't be able to reach anyone else - Lyssa, Thalien, Bran...even Andstella. She needs to tell them I'm okay, as okay as I can be, and that she's seen me. That's not something I can charge Liliales with, not really. He is still a child. And she and Uncle Red will need to help. Whatever happens in the Northern Grove, they should be there. And lastly, the emotional texture I've been resisting overwhelms me as I sob and ask her to be there when I wake up. I have spent nearly two years transcending the idea of death, learning that I might watch everyone else grow old around me. The idea that I might die feels foreign in my head, not that I'm invincible but that the world without me feels set upon a dimmer course. For a moment, I can release all of that and just ask my lover to be there when I wake, like the best mornings when I opened my eyes and she was the first thing I saw. She'll be there, she says. And she'll bring Lyssa as well. With Mistress, I can't send her away. I stay until my vision goes white and there is nothingness around me.Some uncountable time passes and when I come to, Pistil is there and I get a good look at him - silvery red wings, hair like the blazing sun and eyes like Thalien’s.The Heart is not present, so I suppose I will get to know this new Treeborn who has adopted Thalien. He prepares tea for us to share while I recover (the fuzzy ache in my head is persistent) and warns me that the tea here is more about recalling flavours than physical flavour - memory tea.The flavour, if it could be called that, is ephemeral and slips off the tongue before I can place it. It is like tasting the combination of every memory I have of drinking tea. Apparently Pistil watches over the Celestial fae in the Dreaming - teaching all of them without letting on that it’s him. Everyone knows him only as an elder of the community. He tells me conspiratorially that he made it known he was ‘leaving’ back in the day so that it would be easier to mask his presence when he returned. He has been teaching Thalien specifically and engaging him in many games and swordplay. The two of us play a simple children’s game while chatting about Thalien - he feels somewhat like a parent seeing his son’s new girlfriend. I feel like an old friend giving Thalien’s new friend a once over. I bridle a little at being described as a 'new girlfriend' to the man I've loved in some way or another for centuries now. Pistil has known him for less than a year. We glide past this strange relational quirk to talk about Magdalena. He tells me that he heard about her giving up her seed so that Jaeril could recover her grove. It’s possible that the Heart could find a way to let her create a new seed…and Pistil suggests that maybe the other Treeborn could share what they learned about their cycles to help her create something new. I listen quietly as he talks about creating family and seeing the mistakes others made until I have to interrupt. Much like with Rainbow, I'm filled with a protective, righteous fury - all these people talking behind her back about her life and what she might choose or do, after the infinite amount of nothingness that they’ve given her. It is none of their fucking business if she's going to plant a tree, if she wants to create her own people, as if they offer her their 'lessons learned' as though she hasn't learned enough to know that none of us will ever be ready to bring an entire race of people into being He falls back at the chastisement and apologizes for overstepping. And then pushes forward again to ask if I will ever plant a tree.
Thalien says you look for the path forward that is best for everyone, not just yourself. Even people who have been your enemies. You’re like a wandering force of good fortune for anyone you can bestow that gift upon. A good thing for all fae.Would I plant a tree? Why would l need groves full of children? Whole races of people who I design and send out into the world to be the best and worst of myself? There’s some uncrossable divide here between me and people like him and Cereus - the distance between you and the mortal world. Magdalena warned me about it and I worried I would grow to be like that. Maybe I will.
Planting a tree is about finding people who will share things with you, a common nature. It’s starting a family. It’s both like and unlike being a parent. Having children because you’re lonely or because they’ll love you…both selfish things. One of the things that I wanted, and one of the reasons Celestial fae are like they are, is because I thought I had learned a few things but I had no one to share it with. I thought it was important for them to be teachers to others, just like I wanted to be a teacher to them. It’s why they pass to the Dreaming and can linger as long as they wish - I thought it would be a good thing. I thought that with more people who valued learning and teaching, it would be a good thing to exist in the world. And I enjoyed being headmaster and teacher for a while. I enjoyed watching them discover things I didn’t know, and getting to learn from them. I like to think that they did alright. When the Pruning came, they got through it in a way that I respected. If not for the Pruning, I could have seen my children being one of the pillars of the Ten Nations. Maybe they could have helped with that horrible war between elves and trolls and fae.I found it easier to contend with the idea of restoring groves when I didn’t have to think about their Treeborn being involved. I like the Celestial fae - I love that they have a home in the Dreaming and that they endlessly teach one another and learn things. I'm glad that they exist. I think it is so incredibly rude and ignorant to think that the people he designed after himself might have calmed the War of Fire. He was alive too. Why didn't he help? I think of Magdalena, who found people like her out of the chaos of life that already existed. She didn't create anything, she went out and found people to teach and learn from. But in the early days...I have to admit that it would have been hard to be alone. Pistil tells me that in the beginning there were just the first children of the Heart of Song, and many of them couldn't coexist. They aggravated one another, they fought, they didn't get along. And so they started trying to create people who were like them so that they wouldn't be so alone. It's heartbreaking to think of...and I can't really blame them for doing any of that in the context of loneliness. But Starfield described the Beginning to me and how so many of the people living their lives now are just Children of Chaos - no gods, no designers, no hovering or absentee parents. And maybe that is how it should be. Lonely people should find family, not create it. Pistil acknowledges that maybe it’s time for him to step back, and he hopes Cereus does as well. Maybe he’ll wake up with his next batch of children. Could be fun, he says.The conversation lapses as I sit in silence and wonder at what a strange creature he is.
After another unknowable amount of time, the Heart arrives and asks to teach me some things that I’ll need when I wake. I'm an elf with Imperial magic and a fae with dusk magic, but there is a gap in my legacy where the magic of leaf and vine could live if I'm willing to learn it. First - she shows me to push all of my Imperial shadow magic out to the tips of one hand. Then, all the fae dusk magic out to the tips of the other. In one hand is all of the shadows, dragon-magic, Imperial bonds and what I got from growing up in the Empire. In the other, everything I inherited from being a fae of day and night. But neither of those are inherently elf, nor leaf and vine. So what we work on next is something of a crash course in being of leaf and vine. Fae of leaf and vine were always deeply connected to living things, better tree singers than even trolls. In Harmony, she takes me to the stump of the origin tree of Drifting Seeds and shows me how to ask it for a seed, as one of the powers of leaf and vine is the ability to ask any barely living thing to offer a seed.
As fae of leaf and vine, you should be beloved of nature - part of its cycle.The lessons continue for a seemingly infinite span of time. I feel a growing sense of communion with the living things around me and I enjoy the time I spend with the Heart. As a teacher, she is so different from Magdalena or Mistress or anyone else I've learned from. It's different even from my own style of gentle pushing and leading people towards discovery. She takes a very specific, practical interest in the concerns I have over ethics, the responsibility of the things she's teaching me (changing ecology, the way fae of leaf and vine did) and I see her deciding how to structure the lessons based on my concerns. Fae of leaf and vine used to modify the wide area around them as they spread, destroying local life and taking the place of whatever was there beforehand. I see the similarities to the Collective, and when I tell her this, she shows me magic that can heal the things done by the Collective. I imagine that no one else has this magic of leaf and vine (except maybe Magdalena) and how it will be used is up to me, not the stories of the past. Of course, she also teaches me music. It was her notes that began my path to heart song, and she is so clearly connected to the raw emotion transported by the music. The precision of her music is something I imagine Ky Wen would hear with amazement. But the thing that feels precise to me is the exact emotional state she creates - not just 'sadness at being separated' but 'sadness at losing a piece of a relationship that you'll never get back, even as the relationship continues' or 'sadness at being apart for a temporary period as you count the days to being reunited'.
Eventually (time is fuzzy in this space), Pistil interrupts to tell us that those in the waking world are making their approach on the Northern Grove. Magdalena, Uncle Red, and Pistol are all going…and Magdalena will want to speak with the Heart in person. We’ll know soon if they succeed or fail. While we wait, the Heart plays me a piece of her own song. Usually a song isn’t actually heard by anyone until a fae dies, but I suppose the Heart must necessarily have a unique way of approaching her song. The song she plays is about the beginnings of the Treeborn - bright, anxious, hopeful. Accompanists join her song to sing with her and add to the melody. It goes on and on until…I feel cold magic wash over me and infusing into me. They were successful.
