49.5 No One Came

General Summary

Day 1059

I emerge from Harmony with the bundle of leaves tucked into my heart space. The Heart has given me a unique problem…treasured gifts for people I don’t necessarily like. But after a while, I return to Magdalena with my new information about the zither   She is not entirely reassured by what I tell her - that there are other instruments like it, that the Heart meant it only as a way for Treeborn to be governed or related to. And I confirm that her birth Tree is no more, but that I think it was scarified to a worthy cause. Magdalena has, evidently, seen the box that her teacher carries with her and claims to contain the end of the world. At the very least, she tells me that it is a good idea to develop the skill of compartmentalizing my mind so that I can not worry about problems that will likely never worry about me. The end of the world, she thinks, is not my problem.   But eventually I can delay no longer, and I ask Teacher to sit down so I can give her the thing that the Heart wanted her to have, and say the things she wanted to say.  

Ausha has taught me that there is a difference between being important and being loved.

  And when I draw the leaf out of my heart space, she shakes her head.  

It shouldn’t be possible…she kept them? Our Tree is lost but she kept them? Why give them up now?

  There is no answer to this. It feels perfectly natural, to me, that the Heart would want to offer this   As simple or as complex a reason as you’d like, there’s certainly a reason that fits the brief. It’s the first opportunity she’s had, she’s ready to love, whatever.   She’ll hold onto it for now in her own heart space, until she can return it to the Heart for safekeeping. The three of us fall asleep in a pile.  

Day 1060

In the morning, I go looking for Uncle Red to deliver his own leaf, but find him missing. Apparently he has gone ‘looking for someone’ to the East, with no further details given. This leaves me with Asphodeloideae, who I’m disinclined to face alone again…thankfully Mistress accompanies me.   The meeting is stiff and uncomfortable - I’m doing something meaningful and precious for someone I have no soft feelings for.  

I went to speak to your mother and I have something for you.

  When I hand her the leaf, Asphodeloideae gasps and sweeps us up into the Tree for privacy.  

You’ve seen Mother? You can reach her easily?

  She has many (very reasonable) questions, but I tell her I won’t be answering any, especially because I have not told anything more to Magdalena.   Having seen mortals give away their treasures as they die, she wonders if the Heart is dying too. This had not occurred to me, and it seems more likely that the Heart is moving towards personhood rather than dying…   In telling the story of collecting these leaves, I can’t resist the urge to tell her that Magdalena offered a leaf to Magdalena, and it was only at my request that she offered the others as well. She takes it well, and says that it bodes well for our future that I thought of asking for something for her.  

Day 1061

We’re having late breakfast on the ship when Oblivion arrives with a sing-song call! She has black and purple fae wings and curling ram like dragon horns and talons. She’s deathly pale with purple hair and extremely eclectic clothing and accessories - bedecked in jewelry and adornments. And she has winged boots with Zephyr feathers - we could probably make some for Ausha using the Fisherman scion feathers I’ve collected   She’s delighted that I know her name! It must be a rare occurrence.   When Ying Ling arrives, she has a little trouble remembering but soon catches up, particularly when Oblivion begins asking after the homework she assigned to the young crow. For Ying Ling, it has only been a few days and of course, she is also no longer a wizard. Despite my gentle urging to be kind to her wayward student, Oblivion seems delighted at the thought of being able to hand out some punishment games.   Oblivion also brings along all of the things Ying Ling and Lyssa left behind in their Drifting Seeds lives (including Lyssa’s journal, which she promises she hasn’t read). The journal, which spans years, is a collection of letters to me as Lyssa writes about her adventures and thoughts during our time apart.   She also brings a meeting gift for me - several bottles of fluorescent orange liquid that she says I should store in the cooling compartment of my travel pouch. When I curiously pop the cork on one, I find it sugary, bubbly, and very refreshing.   Over the next few days, Oblivion settles into the group and both Ying Ling and Lyssa recover their memories. Amidst the group of us, Mistress and Skyen have the most trouble hanging onto the memory of exactly who Oblivion is, but both are easily bolstered by me and Starfield. I point out that it is certainly fair to take advantage of these memory issues and play pranks on Mistress, but it doesn’t seem sporting to be mean to poor Skyen. The mountain lion is certainly out of his depth, and being a very good sport about it all.   And finally, she also makes a few final adjustments to Starfire’s legacy using Lyssa’s blood (she say any part of the body will do, but our elvish sensibilities prevent my love from offering hair or spit as Oblivion suggests). With this adjustment, Lyssa will be able to absorb it in a few decades rather than centuries.   As I suspected, Starfire’s was the first legacy to be created, and Oblivion has refined the technique since then. But a missing piece of the puzzle is that *all* dragon legacies have been created by Oblivion herself, and she won’t teach anyone else how to do it. Of course, no one ever remembers that she was involved, though Wraith has been a very helpful guide in finding people who need to have their legacy extracted ahead of tragedy.   By now, she observes that I have almost as much magical capacity as No Moon ever did, but the illustration she makes of our magical makeup is starkly different. While we have both held many different varieties, my magic is still divided and portioned out so that if one pool of energy runs out, I can’t simply connect to the rest of myself to keep fuelling it. No Moon was always interwoven, allowing him to pour his entire being into each working of magic if he needed to.   By the end of Oblivion’s first day with us, we have even managed to heal Starfield even further with her help and the energy from the Great River. My dragon sister can now take on her dragon form for as long as she likes, and Skyen looks blissful lounging on her back as they watch the stars together.   We end the day with a picnic held in an elaborate castle that Oblivion conjure to hover in the night sky - it’s an extraordinary piece of magic and gives us a beautiful view of the night sky.   As the others digest (several of the fruits served with dinner are marked ‘extinct’ in the books I’ve seen Doraal peruse), Oblivion and I seal away to discuss Void in private.   Her brother continued waging No Moon’s one-dragon war on the Zephyr to try and rescue Starfury, but Void himself is not a one-dragon army the way his big brother was. Trenali is angry with him, but Darkness is sure he’ll recover in time (perhaps in time to wage a three- or four- dragon war with his big sister and other newfound family).   While Oblivion didn’t want to tell the others, she confides in me that whatever has cursed Void is very powerful, and she is very worried. He is so injured, magically, that healing is necessarily slow; if it goes too fast, he might never use magic again. And while he protested, so long ago, that magic wasn’t for him, we know that his innate magic is what fuels his wings, his mind, and everything about him. That is simply the nature of dragons. For now, Darkness has taken him to sleep on the dark side of the silver moon where no light reaches. He will be safe there, but it will take a very long time to recover.   The mention of being ‘on the moon’ disturbs me for only a moment before I’m overcome with disappointment that I won’t get to see him for such a long time. I had hoped that he would be present when I take on No Moon’s legacy (Oblivion shakes her head - she thinks I should absorb it sooner, and she can help). And I want him to see Trillium again.   As for the demons who did this to him, Oblivion and I are both satisfied that Magdalena and Qing Chen will settle things appropriately, and recover Eclipse’s bones as well. Oblivion surely would have done it herself, but Darkness says we can’t exterminate our enemies because there are always innocents amidst the wicked ones.  

Auntie wasn’t fair, to send all of you only once. Why didn’t she send you back after No Moon died? We needed help, and no one was there.

  Consumed as I have been with the grief of being ripped away from No Moon, Starfire, and Void, I have not yet fully connected to the idea that their family received pivotal help and support from mine across centuries of their lives. When they desperately needed hope, compassion, love, or joy, one of us was there. Until Starfire died and their eggs were taken…and then no one came again. It makes my blood boil again, thinking of Asphodeloideae’s ‘compassion’.   Given what has happened to Void now, Oblivion wonders if maybe there is bad Fate surrounding Void that would keep us apart. Perhaps when he is recovered, we can find a Fate breaker to get involved?