25.1 She's Learning

General Summary

Day 404

After seeing Bran and Magdalena I am once again too exhausted to continue working. She and Tira go off to work on the magic that we'll use to connect these fae-to-be with the trees while I return to camp. There, I find Lyssa and Dal deep in conversation with a distinct gap between them and the others. Mystery is hovering a little closer, clearly uncertain of how to join in.   They all move closer at my chiding and Lyssa produces some dice and begins to teach us a dwarven game. Soon the strange sense of space has abetted and we are all laughing and teasing as we shift from dwarven dice to a fae game that I swear has changed in unfair and unreasonable ways since I last played. Camellia is much better at it than I am.   After a while we ease into dinner prep as Alder, Dal, and Lyssa go off foraging while the rest of us tidy up. A festive atmosphere emerges and we sing and make music together - Mystery sings songs that I think Mistress must have taught her and I can tell that for Dal and Lyssa it feels just as nostalgic as it does for me.   When Tira and Magdalena return they look companionable. It's good to see...perhaps all the pieces of my family will come together a bit easier now.  

Day 405

Early the next morning I wake to find a physical manifestation of the Empress kneeling at my bedroll. She is so tall that at first I don't realize, especially at this early hour, but she is on her knees and offers a hand after I've taken a moment to wake myself up and rise to greet her. We walk together and as usual, she speaks while I listen.   This time she is asking one last thing from my family before I leave them. And this time she is clear that she is asking, not commanding. Ten drops of heartsblood from each of them and she will offer an explanation afterwards. I continue to be pained by this - am I not entrusted already with her wellbeing and safety? What do either of us possibly gain from delaying an explanation? Before I can voice this she simply says "I am not yet free" and fades from my sight. Alone once again, I head deeper into the Grove and find myself amongst the Celestial trees once again. For an hour I stay there unmoving while I let my illusory heart magic capture the enormous silver giants around me so that Andstella can see them too.    When I get back to camp Alder immediately whisks me away for a morning run and we leave Camellia tending to the fire. He has found a beautiful spot overlooking the entire Grove and I can see the heart of silver and gold at its centre. With my head on his shoulder we reminisce about how swiftly life has changed for us - from being lost in a forest and guarding the gate to a human city. Now Tira wants him to meet her parents (I laugh at the thought of this and I am eager to see it realized) and I have a little fae son and an elvish niece. The threads that have led us here are so varied and delicate. Tira, Knotrael and Alder are thinking about a child...and there is no part of me that feels it's too soon. This side has become home as well and even if that happens much sooner than anyone anticipates a childhood in Dreamfall or in Lone Mountain Keep would not be a bad childhood.   We fly back to camp together with him leaning on my magic. Lyssa and Dal are awake now but Tira is still passed out surrounded by notes. I can see some fae runes that Magdalena must have given her, some elvish and some from Afan. She's working on using blood magic to draw out tree sap...which just might work.   When Magdalena herself arrives, it is bearing questions for me (a delightful role reversal). She wants to know if I connect to both shade and tree if I can feel the flow of energy through me and explain it to these humans. Doing what we did with Dawn will be too dangerous and so we need to guide them to their own path which means helping them feel the difference between what they are and what they might become. For me, there is no flow. I am an elf and a fae and I can't find the line between them; I can't explain it to someone else to guide them. But Alder...Alder remembers reaching for a soft magical part of himself that he hadn't recognized before and he credits Magdalena's guidance. She showed him that it was worth reaching for, worth undergoing the pain, to find the dream that outweighs the nightmares. They need something to aspire to. At this, Magdalena excuses herself. She is not ready to be inspiring and forgiving for these people. It would be asking a lot of her.   Instead, we bring the witches together and I paint the image for them. Illusion has steadily become one of my real strengths when used in combination with transmutation and my heart magic, and Tira augments it with magic she learned from the Kindred to give it weight and consequence. Even before we begin, the villagers all agree that they are willing to leave if that is what needs to be done. I am privately quite pleased to offer them an alternative that they will already be reaching for.   I guide the arcane point of view from my memories of Dreamfall and the dormant trees awakening as music slipped back through the leaves. Grey-green trees lit up with colour and iridescence as they come alive again with the colours of the seasons. Then deeper through the thicket of the Northern Grove and the overwhelming sense of home that comes with seeing my tree again, taller than all the others and stretching upwards with purplish leaves. Then deeper still through this Grove into the Celestial Grove, upwards through silvery bark and golden branches until we burst forth from the canopy into the Dreaming itself. Iridescent gossamer strands of fate swirling around us as the heavens open up and the starts shine down on faintly portrayed Celestial fae. I infuse it with the sense of joy and wonder at a lost people found again and when the illusion fades I see the stars still reflected in their eyes.   This has been my part, and I turn them over to Tira as we enter the Grove and begin the delicate threading of the needle that will bond them to their new trees. Before we release them I give one last direction and demonstration from a single book that I read and learned while Tira was working.  

I've separated all the books you kept here. When you wake, it will be your responsibility to return them to the trees. You are to read them again, learn their stories, and sing them back to whatever tree will listen. And then you can get rid of the books, because they should not hold those songs in paper.

  Once they have all been taken into the Grove's embrace Magdalena drifts down to join us and to say goodbye. I have no idea how long it will be until I see her again but I'm eager for her to return, eager to travel with her.  

Take care of my wayward student. She needs you. And I need you.

  The village is now quiet, nearly empty save for Renelli and Yneir. Yneir greets me at the edge of the Grove and thanks me. I don't know if this is the destiny she was working towards or just one that she's happy to see. Regardless, she surprises me with her sincerity and apologies for being impolite with Bran's heart. She has found someone else to help and will be flying home now but she knows she'll see me again (in Winter) as I'm heading her way. Before she departs she gives me a large golden feather infused with fire magic and then...she transforms into an enormous three-legged golden crow and wings off towards the horizon.   It's a pretty good goodbye, all things considered.   We pass the final hours of the day helping Renelli tidy up the village and put it to rest. Working together we strengthen the protections around it and Bran lays magic around it so that the people who need it will find it. I hope it'll become yet another Grove where elves gather to watch over the sleeping fae.   That evening all my elvish family give heartsblood to the Empress' request, though Tira is curious at why it is so explicitly a request rather than a command. "She's learning," I tell them. "Well if it will further her growth and learning, how could we say no?"  

Day 406

A mere four days after we arrived, it is time to depart. We stand together at the edge of the Grove and I tear myself away from Lyssa with a force of will that rivals what I showed to the Empress in the ziggurat. I fly across the landscape through shadow after shadow for hours until her voice stops echoing in my head.  

The skies belong to both of us. We'll never be far apart again.

  Night finds me a sobbing mess in my small campsite when I open my pack to find dozens of tea packets, herbs and spices, baked goods, and small gifts from everyone I left behind. I finally resort to my own sleep magic to finally find rest.  

Day 407

When I wake the Empress is, again, waiting for me. This time she folds me into the biggest hug I have ever received (and I have had countless hugs from Doraal). Tea first, then magic, then the answers she owes me. Still tear-stained, still shell-shocked, I pour the heartsblood into a magic circle without even trying to understand the runes. She steps in, fades a little, and then the shadows around her coalesce into...an elf. She's an elf.   I bustle about the camp and brew tea (a blend of 'sad' and 'hopeful' from Camellia) and then sit to have a much-needed conversation with the Empress...who is an elf.   Or...looks like an elf.   The magic gave her a blood soul avatar and since there are no Osyr to draw blood from, the heartsblood from my family worked enough to give her an elvish body. Magdalena had told her that I would need help in my next journey and that if she was ever going to be anything at all, she couldn't be an Empress anymore. So now she has worked through the magic to find a way to come with me and be with me when I would otherwise be alone.  

I owe you more than I can repay. I wouldn't be here without you, I wouldn't have freedom without you. And without you I might never have found my way back to anything. So...as hard as it is for me to change I want to be company for you and I want to ask your help as I figure out how to be something that is not an Empress. I'd rather just be a friend.

  It's like something out of a dream I barely remember - the idea that the Empress would step out of my consciousness and ask to be friends...I don't think I even dared to dream about this as a youngster thinking about what my future might look like. And I certainly cannot disconnect the idea of the Empress from this slight, almost nervous-looking woman in front of me. Not yet, anyway. So...I ask for her name and immediately backtrack - does this avatar have a name? Would she like to create one?   Instead she gives me her name. Kaide. Magdalena has told me many times that knowledge has a price. The price of this name is the awareness that anytime I reach out to that connection I have with the leader of my people, the Empress who I now know to be not a god but just someone who was once like me, I will have her name come to my lips unbidden. But I asked before I had thought through this price and now I've paid it.   The Empress...Kaide....tells me that she was the young mistress of a merchant family. She has sealed away the knowledge and memories of being an Empress at Magdalena's instruction. Our teacher told her that I'd had to do something similar and that she could at least be as brave as I was to do this.  

Lately she's been sharp with her words and I've needed it.

  I understand. I understand all too well her inability to be vulnerable when we were still around my family. For all that they are my safe place I still see the distance between them and the Empress, one that I once shared. I have the unique honour of being the only person around whom gods and undying beings can simply be themselves.   My eyes mist again and the tea blurs before me. Kaide watches me thoughtfully.   Teacher has told you to leave them behind just when you've gotten Dal and Lyssa. It's so unfair. I could have said no. No you couldn't have. But it wasn't because of Magdalena. It's something worth doing - that's why I couldn't say no.   She wipes a tear away and nods. I know she knows; I can't imagine that she has lived this long inside me without knowing exactly how I feel.  

The sea flows through us, carries sadness away.