33.1 The Sum of Our Memories

General Summary

Day 496

The clay spirit lurks at the edges of the space as I go through song stones, leaving me some semblance of privacy.   The first song I take in alone is not the song of a life but of how the trees came to be. It begins as an ode to the power of the oral tradition, once that I almost wish I could show to Brandwin and admonish him for his superiority.   'Mountain Gods' - Ingans took away our home as well as the home of the Osyr, I hear. Magdalena and Uncle Red sheltered their songs and the last remaining branches of our trees and all of this happened before the Pruning. The timeline hardly fits into my short-lived mind but its importance pales in comparison to what matters: Trees. Trees and songs disconnected by centuries that can now condense as soon as either of my Treeborn family can find this place. It is all I can do not to throw away my best laid plans and call them both to me here as soon as I can. But these trees have waited for millennia and they can wait a while more for me to make sure the land is ready to receive an old people born again.    Further songs tell me of how the elves here shaped themselves alongside the fae. While the history of Imperial elves is well known to be be bloodstained and then shade-sheltered I now hear of Tragus and Saelas and the paths they chose. The strange chosen bond between guardian elves and the fae of seasons they served begins with such honour and fades so quickly to bitterness and lack of care. The heavy service that the fae bought from elves with their nurturing of our trees was evidently not something passed on properly in songs for future generations, for Saelas to be treated so.   But the last song brings it all to sense in my mind. Nucifera sings of elves who clung to fae as a remnant of our song, of elves who sought shelter with dragons to recover our wings, and elves who she hoped would stand with Osyr against the Mountain Gods. She tells me of the blood she took on her own hands as she spun Fate around the best future she could ind   The first Fatespinner who somehow cast a thread this far into the future to find me, the farm girl Empress. She leaves instructions for Thalien locked behind the certainty of claws of madness sinking into 'the one who unravels'. My heart clenches and shoves aside the wonder of the first Fatespinner seeing my path.   I send Kaide to bring the others inside while I stay with the Grove and slip into the dreaming; I have questions that can't bear to wait even  as I know how much it must hurt Kaide to be here. She departs and I sweep into the Dreaming calling for Nucifera. She doesn't answer but I feel her presence far to the Northeast and fly after it as quickly as my wings can take me. In the Dreaming it takes minutes to come to the valley nestled between what was once two mountains. The land is burned and scarred even now, no shoots of green life returning even after thousands of years. The stumps of petrified Grove trees lie in a fallen pattern around an impact site but I continue past, following the feeling of the person I seek.   The remaining mountain stands tall with a small wooden cabin set upon its side. As I approach an elderly elvish woman emerges to greet me and kneels but as always, I wave it off.  

Not for you; for the one you carry.

  I wave this off as well. If Kaide were here she wouldn't want that either. Inside the cottage she pours me tea and wraps an illusion around the outskirts of the structure to show me what the Grove once looked like - willow trees with sweeping boughs amidst the vibrant green of the valley.   The conversation is anxious and stilted - she says I am not quite what she expected. She expected me to send her a spinner but that I am clearly more of a do-it-myself sort of person. She expected me to be the one to return to our trees but that instead I have gone on to something new. She says all of this so neutrally that I can't quite get a read on her and besides, I am still preoccupied with her song.   As I tentatively ask what will happen if these 'claws of madness' are pushed back I see a spark of concern flicker in her. In that moment my anxiety melts away - her song speaks of Drakken, not Trillium. Of course, the madness clears an enemy weaver from the board so that my own spinners are freer to work. With this clarified I feel...almost foolish for being here.   So as often happens when strange people meet, we exchange stories as best we can. I have already heard her life's song so I can only give her mine. I tell her of life in the Empire, growing up in my orchard, studying, war, and the pain that caused me to come across the Barrier, the family I have built of humans and fae as I travel. I tell her of Dreamfall and the Shard of the Empress who became my elven sister. And of the Tree planted by the Reaper that gave me my wings. Nucifera is glad to hear that the Reaper survived her ordeal and asks me to pass on her thanks to Magdalena for saving these trees all those years ago.   It is such a long story to tell...part of me wonders if by the time I am old, will I ever be able to tell my life's story in a single sitting?   But when it is all shared I ask her honestly why she saw the Osyr for us. The Empire came to be and we are indeed as bound to Osyr (or at least, one Osyr) as a people can ever be. But the bonds I want for us with the fae and with dragons are not things she saw or worked for. For the moment, I don't quite see her as an ally.   Her answer is satisfying - if elves had not stood with Osyr when they did then they would have stood with the fae, who soon forgot the tragedy of losing our Grove and that we were once kin. And when the burning Mountain Gods came with honeyed words then no one would have joined with the Osyr and we might have become part of their collective might like so many other races.  

Osyr wouldn't stop us from being elves. But much more than that I cannot see. I worked for 200 years to prevent a single catastrophic future; I did not work towards any particular future aside from any that was not that one, horrible fate.

  From her perspective the best way to be a weaver is to be an advisor, not an actor. And she asks after my own spinners and whether they, too, are advisors. She sees the work I am doing to bring Thalien back to the waking world and requests that she meet him before I return him to life, for it has been such a long time since she had a disciple.   It is such a simple request for such an ancient and lonely person to make of me. But I rebel at the thought of Thalien learning anything from this woman who has chained herself to her mission for millennia. Speaking with her is like speaking across time to an idea, not a person. It is a strange mix of curiosity, compassion, and respect. Instead, I ask if she will teach Bran instead. I will not continually ask Thalien to weave fate from here while Bran stagnates in his own journey, and I am significantly less worried about what Bran might learn about the duty of a Fatespinner from Nucifera. I brush it off as not wanting to disturb my own elvish Fatespinner from where I have just settled him, though I also ask if Nucifera herself would like to visit the Celestial Grove.   'Endless Sky' she calls them, and declines the offer. Of course she has been there before and says that it is painful for her to be there. She remains in existence through her commitment to her mission while the Celestial fae remain sheltered by trees which give them the purpose of community, teaching, and interconnectedness. These things are admirable, but not her particular mission. To join them she would have to give up her path and accept theirs.   The long conversation has tired her but before I leave, we walk through the Grove and she shows me what it once was. The greenery spreads around us and wind blows through the slender branches. I hear no songs, but the music is still there without the voices. Leaning on my arm much like an elderly woman she tells me that it is a constant drain to produce such illusions in the Dreaming if they do not exist in the waking world. One of her disciples built her cabin in the waking world for her so that she did not have to sustain it herself. In five days when she has recovered hers strength she asks me to bring her my human Fatespinner. And one day, she asks if I will remove the still smouldering magic beneath the ground that prevents life from sprouting here again.  

It took from my time to yours for elves to simply be proud to be elves, not just people who were once fae and consumed by loss.

  Before I leave I fuel the illusion around her cabin until I am next able to visit.   I have spent a year in the waking world encountering remnants and relics of people who sacrificed themselves in the name of something greater, wondering if that would be my fate as well. In the last few months it has become more and more clear that for me to sacrifice myself in the name of what I am doing would be a mistake - this working cannot succeed without me. It feels...not elvish. Not Imperial. It feels like a new thought, to look at an ancient and tragic servant of the future and not see myself reflected in her. I see someone I once was, but not who I might become.   It is deep into the night when I wake amidst the trees and call for the clay elf who led me here. He materializes and offers 'Watcher' when I ask what I might call him.  

You have surprised me with your respect. Callous as it is, your tears give me hope. Perhaps my watch is soon at an end.

  Kind words, delivered with an absolute lack of warmth. But I have too many thoughts to be dismayed by this. A watcher cannot do what must be done in this place.   The others are asleep, save for Kaide, when I find them in one of the antechambers. As I snuggle up next to her she shows me an etched crystal that Liliales made under her tutelage. It functions like its own illusory caster, recording what it 'sees' and projecting it out again; my little archivist hard at work. She tells me he is going to help her capture the sea when we get there so that she can carry it with her.   I know that being here can't be easy for her. The watcher was cruel in his words and I am concerned for her feelings, so I prod a bit. She admits that being in a place so full of memories is hard for her as someone who has so few. Avan'Nal was also difficult, but not this bad. Here she feels like just another ghost, not whole or complete. I point out that the complication of this place's history with the Empire can only make things harder even though that history is not one she should bear.   We go to sleep curled into one another for comfort. When we reach Deldrin she tells me she knows she wants to say goodbye to her other half and I am happy that she has found a decision.  

Day 497

The next morning I am anxious to get back to the trees but we all must take the time to eat and orient ourselves. Jaeril has caught and cooked game for us with local herbs, commenting that it is best to season a creature with the plants that grow where it lives. This is something that Doraal believes wholeheartedly and I recall some lively debates in the kitchen between him and Dal.   The pelt of one of the creatures Jaeril found is a lush, iridescent spotted cat's coat. And Trillium bears armfuls of interesting, magic-laden fruit that fairly oozes magic when she slices it open. I tell everyone that they are on strict instructions not to throw out any seeds; I want to keep all of them and see what might be grown from them elsewhere.   Today I intend for Jaeril, Trillium, and Kaide to range out throughout the city and canyon to get a sense of how the people here lived. I hope that the three of them with their combined memory complications will be able to support one another as they work. Later I will want to bring Trillium to the Grove and work on finding ancestors of leaf and vine, and I will want Jaeril's presence there as well, though for what I'm not sure.   For today though, just Liliales and I descend into the enormous grotto. His eyes are filled with wonder and I remember that he never saw the Celestial Grove. For him, this is the second Grove he has seen besides the Northern Grove where he was born.  

They feel sad...and empty.

  Together we examine the song stones and theorize about how we might reconnect the trees to these songs. I try to channel Tragus out into a heartsong accompanist but the trees still don't hear. I step forward alone and offer up a piece of my own song - growing up in my orchard. We feel them respond as though hearing a pleasant tune from the audience, but we do not connect. I had truly hoped that just the heartsong would work but there is clearly something deeper we will need here. And so we split up - Liliales to study the stones and how to access their music in a way that we might build a bridge while I stay with the trees. When I offer it a piece of Day and Night magic, the song from the Celestial Grove about sharing memories, they react with such distaste that I am almost offended.   A nagging part of me feels that I will need blood magic here, but I am cautious about the idea of blood and trees now. Even though it feels right, I will let that be the last thing I try. Instead I work through studying their origins - all cuttings from the same tree that have never flowered. They are duplicates, all of them. And watered in blood, if what I heard in the songs is accurate. Liliales finds the song of their planting and confirms it - the first cutting was planted and watered with the life blood of the fae of leaf and vine who were unable to sleep and transition to the next stage of their cycle. Once the fae of leaf and vine had become elves they made their pact with the fae of seasons to continue watering the trees with blood when elders were ready to die. It is this pact that Tragus and Saelas served, though by Saelas' time no more trees were being planted.   I have the beginnings of a blood working in my mind but I fear that we will not achieve anything without my Treeborn family here. While Liliales continues listening to song stones, I settle down to compose. It begins as a song I want to send to Uncle to tell him that I have found trees that will need the songs he has saved. As I write it turns into something else.   The song I work out reframes the path of my life.   The light, carefree decades in my family's orchard as Spritz, bright-eyed and innocent. I shape myself as a seedling planted amidst orange trees alongside my siblings and the other Frontier children, sheltered by shade and flowers.   My next decades in the Capital and at Mistress' side as Heiassa, having chosen my name and my path. Like a vine clinging to the trunk of the future I saw for myself. I studied what I was taught and what I figured out for myself. I came to know the overwhelming energy and comfort of love as I planted myself and stretched.   It is shaped as I imagine a song of leaf and vine must be, but I have to break the pattern as I tell the story of who I am now. I am a cycle of grafted branches that comingle into one vine that has no end. I write the verses of my growth into Shae'deneir'lanael and the Dagger That Strikes At Heartsblood of the Mountain Gods who tore away our first home. I write about the frozen years after nearly losing Mistress and Doraal in which I paused my growth and dug my roots in deep so that I might survive still after the wind had blown away my leaves. Wind carried me across the Barrier to wake as Morning and have to sprout again only to blossom into something I have to imagine is incomprehensible to these trees.   My song devolves into quick cycles of growth and flowering as I find regain my memory, find my apprentices, my teacher, my Empress, my wings, my love, my children, the history and hope of my people.   By the time I finish it is no longer a song for Uncle, it is the best song I could have written for these trees.