12.2 Let It Be Perfect
General Summary
Day 110
As we all bundle off to bed, Tira slips into my room without knocking. It’s a small part of our relationship back home - she’s my apprentice and she comes and goes as needed. She settles into bed with me and hands me a book written in her own hand. How long has it been since we’ve read together?
A Collection of Kindred Stories, is the book I get lost in for the next hour or so. Each story is written out in the Kindred language, then in elvish, and the next page and a half are filled with footnotes on the meaning, connotation, and potential translations and questions. This was how she learned the language, and what better way to learn a people than through their treasured stories?
Eventually she lets herself out, and I fall asleep.
Day 111
In the morning, both Tira and Hella come to attend to me. Hella and I have been travelling together and camping for so long that it has become normal, but Tira has prepared a proper tea and breakfast service. Hella looks a little anxious and she is directed in laying things out. Clearly I have been slacking on elements of her training, but as I note to the others, this is what comes of apprenticing to both a wizard and a Fatespinner.
“Bran always says to let things be what they will be!”
“Then let things be perfect”
With the rest of the day, Tira and I head out together alone into the Keep. In the few days she has been here she has probably explored more than I have. She leads us to a chamber that was clearly made for elves, but seemingly not by elven hands. There are empty planters all around the chamber, and the magic here feels alive. Each planter has an inscription though some are worn away by time. They recall things that people can’t quite reach.
Once all light returns to whence it came, memories remain.
For even those locked in stone, the earth between your toes.
We sit together as Tira speaks about feeling adrift, both with me and this new family. Back home, the was a place for her, and missions to be completed. Now? Everything has changed, and it is an opportunity but still one that is overwhelming. I have thoughts about what I need her to do, but I stay silent and let her continue.
And as I expected she would, she has her own thoughts on where she belongs - as my Hand amongst our family and people here. We go over our priorities:
- The Severed
- Killeon and the Order of the Cleansing Wave
- The Trolls’ Forest
And what of the community here? Surely we can give them more than just safety while we wait to return home. We are far from an ideal world but ideally this Fort would become the new Frontier, a staging area as we continue developing a relationship with humans, dwarves, fae, and trolls.
But the people...Tira says the Barrier seems to filter out greatness. I only managed to get through by forgetting so much of who I am. The people on this side are not enough to form a thriving community; we are missing skills and talents that we need. So in the absence of an army, they need opportunities to learn and grow.
I want a relationship with the Weaver’s village. I want a relationship with Deldrin. I want to see Brighton brought to its knees and built back into a place that doesn’t reek of filth. All of this side of the Barrier is a place that once belonged to us as well as the other ancient races who live here, and I want it to welcome us back. Even if the humans do not accept us, we are too entrenched here to all simply vanish. I tell Tira of the young elvish girl, Cheena, with a human mother.
So looking forward, we deal with the Severed to collect an army, then the Order, and then move in peace towards the trolls.
It sounds simple in three steps. Even the first step breaks down into a series of complex decisions that Tira is well-equipped to manage.
Here we are next to a vast source of power for making things. What do we need made? A shield for Knotrael, I think. Tira suggests weaving Haze’s magic into cloaks that could shield us from fire. He is a master of mists, as all true dragons have a strong elemental magic. She tells me of a dragon with the magic of the deep earth, and another with the magic of a storm in their wings. I shiver, but the way ahead seems clearer with her beside me.
The moment of planning lapses, and we are left looking around this space. It feels lonely, and sort of eerie. I take out the pearl and glimpse the past - it was a garden, but also a graveyard of sorts. Then the magic of the pearl rings out against the magic in the air and the vision fades. It’s too similar, but just different enough to resist one another. It only takes a few moments for Tira to spin a bridge between them and let them resonate together, and then we see the place as it should be. Still a garden, still a graveyard, but there’s an apparition of a young elvish soldier sitting on the bench before us. He notices me.
“I’m sorry. I’m not the one you came to see,” he says. He is an echo, or a memory.
“Is it over?” he asks, “Is the dying done?”
My breath catches. I have no desire to tell this memory that his war is over only for a new one to have risen.
“We have lived in peace for centuries,” I say carefully.
“Then it was worth my life,”
And we sit quietly together. His presence is so slight; it could be any number of young soldiers who must have fallen in this war. Sitting beside him brings me to tears, despite never having known him or who he was. It is like sitting beside a vast number of the fallen of a war I now regret. I can only hope that a descendant of mine won’t sit with the fallen of my war in a thousand years and feel the same.
The inscriptions ring in my ears as I look around at the planters and the living things that sprout from them. All the stone soldiers in Deldrin forever guarding their posts with no earth beneath them, the bodies that lay together throughout the Keep, the forests we burned.
When Tira and I rise to leave, we resolve to bring the plants back to this place. Between Fenrir and Camellia, I think we could restore it. But no more will be buried here.
