45.4 Was It Hard?

General Summary

Day 1014

That night, Thalien visits me in the Dreaming and I’m enfolded in the fourth critically important embrace that I needed to feel, at least as much as I can feel in the Dreaming.  

Was it hard?

  He asks such good, blunt questions. I tell him that just the beginning was hard, before I could tell anyone what to do next. Everything after that was just…a blur of acceptance and time with the Heart.   Thalien, of course, has some basis for understanding the complexity of facing a slow, creeping death without pain. In his arms, I recount how different it was to face the Ziggurat when I was first in Dreamfall - the chilling demands of the ancient Empress and the feeling that I might not return from my journey to meet her. I wrote letters then, not to say goodbye but to lay out the next steps if my mission had to go on without me. I’ve always felt that the people I’d say goodbye to would already know what I’d say, and no writing on a page would bring anything but an agonizing scrap of memory to hold onto until the paper turned to dust.   But now…now the plan is clear enough that it really could go on without me if it had to. It would be harder. It would probably not turn out exactly the way it needs to, but people could keep going.  

You’ve grown so powerful…it seems that hardly anything could touch you now.

 

Only my own power can threaten me.

  It’s a bit of a bitter joke. It does seem like my own mistakes and miscalculations are the greatest threat to me and the happiness and safety of my family. My endlessly mortal family, even as we all attach ourselves to things that will surely prolong our lives.   Thalien tells me that some of the elder Celestial fae have told him stories about Treeborn (I have to wonder if Pistil tells stories about himself) and how strange they seem. From my perspective, I think it is a matter of origins or overcoming them. The people from Undying origins who don’t work to gain mortal perspective (the way Magdalena has) will always have that strange emotional distance that Cereus and Pistil have. Those of us who grew up mortal will always remember being so fragile.   And we’ll always remember when problems were small and manageable, instead of these never-ending wars and quests. Thalien and I have the same intense desire to just kick the ever-loving shit out of the Collective at the earliest opportunity. But that, too, is a problem that has to wait. For now, we snuggle up and fall asleep in the Dreaming.  

Day 1015

I wake to a tray of tea, Lyssa’s appetizers, and my mother’s cooking. It is a good morning.   Before long, Magdalena collects me to work on some magic together to patch up my leaking Leaf and Vine magic, and then we can have a conversation about what happened while I was out.   We wind up deep in the cycle forest that protects the origin tree, and a fairy circle forms around me as we work through releasing all my energy and then pulling it back. Trees sprout, and we’ll have to replant them later where there is more room for their roots. Wildflowers and vibrant green crass flow outwards from me as dormant seeds wake and come to life, bathed in my magic. I can’t wait to show Doraal how the leaves curl towards me and seem to smile as I glance at them. He would understand what I mean when I say the leaf is smiling. I can’t imagine many others would.  

I have more in common with Mother than I knew.

  Magdalena had no idea that the Heart had been working for all these years on something to bring back songs and people. They’ve been doing the same thing from opposite ends. She is more than a little mad because if the Heart had broken free at the beginning, it could have been very different. This is such a complicated feeling, and I’m so proud of her for having it.   Much like Thalien and I had talked about Treeborn being unfathomably different, Magdalena accepted long ago that Kaie isn’t perfect, despite her omnipotence and knowledge- there are ways that she’s just to different and she/Magdalena will never see eye to eye. It’s like that with the Heart as well.  

I never thought she’d be proud of me. That surprised me a bit. I always thought she was glad to see me go and that Teacher had taken me away from the rest of the family. Turns out that she asked Teacher to help me, because she was worried that the rest of the family was picking on me.   I never thought that she’d been paying attention, let alone caring and helping. Did she tell you that she was sifting through songs all this time, looking for anyone who had mentioned any of us? She was trying to keep tabs on as many of us as she could.

  Part of her wants to hunt down some of her siblings for what they did. She and Uncle Red had a conversation about Temira. “It tickles me that she did something so harmless - writing and introspecting on others” though I have to remark that it may be harmless but it’s certainly annoying. It will be such an awkward conversation when we finally meet.   After we visit the stump, the next step for her is to take “Chen-boy” on a trip to his home. The time she’s had travelling with all of us as a family has been so precious and talking to Mother shifted her perspective a bit and made her want to be selfish and greedy. She wants time with ‘everyone’ and that means solving some problems. She and Qing Chen are going to go make the demons leave Kaide alone. And then she’s going to stick Qing Chen with Kaide to learn some things. I have to grin at the thought of formal Qing Chen alongside Kaide, who Cycadaes once alluded to being ‘mischievous’ in her early life. I can think of no better way to get Kaide to lighten up than to have her teach Qing Chen.   And when that is finished…our field trip.  

I haven’t had the best relationship with her over the past few millennia - it’s been a bit fraught. But I understand her more now than I did then. She’s been coming out of her own pain too. You seem to have that effect on people. I felt like I owed her. I wanted to tell her that I was proud of what she’d done, even if we didn’t see eye to eye at the time. In a way, I resented that she had turned what was left of Fae of Leaf and Vine into living weapons. It’s only after being with you and the journey we’ve been on that I could see how much better off elves had become from bonding with her, and how much she stands in for the Grove that they lost. The War of Fire was a terrible thing, just as bad as the Pruning, and she carries so many scars. But she’s come out of them beautifully. I regret that I couldn’t have brought Ausha with me…the two of them are going to need some time.

  Listening to Magdalena’s thoughts is astounding and cathartic in a way I couldn’t have predicted. From the manipulative, defensive person she was when we travelled from Dreamfall to the Celestial Grove to this…I’m so proud of her. She tells me that she knows the Heart of Song could have been better; they needed her to be better. But everyone has changed, and people reconnect as who they are now (which may include pieces of who they were).